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The past year wasn’t so favorable to Huawei, especially to its flagship devices P10 and P10 Plus. While those two handsets pack some punch in terms of specs and features, they have failed to gain the same traction that rival phones from major OEMs like Samsung or even OnePlus have garnered.

This year, however, the Chinese phone maker aims to change the tide of competition in its favor by launching the Huawei P20, P20 Pro and P20 Lite. In this post, we’re going to take a look at all the rumors, leaks and speculations surrounding the upcoming P20 and P20 Pro. As for the P20 Lite, it’s fully covered here.

Huawei entered the 18:9 club last year and the P20 and P20 Pro won’t be any different. The pair will come with the FullView design, with the Pro variant expected to rock a 6-inch panel while the standard model will reportedly feature a 5.7-inch panel.

We’ve seen several leaks and renders of the Huawei P20 and P20 Plus, which have all but confirmed earlier reports that pointed to an iPhone X-like notch. This design will also appear on the P20 Lite, but of course, the notch will not house the same features on all three phones.

Huawei will reportedly try to emulate iPhone X Animoji and Face ID by mounting a Point Cloud Depth Camera on the notch, but we cannot confirm whether the notch will be as crowded as the Apple flagship, which has up to eight functions, including the selfie camera, speaker and microphone.

Like always, the P20 should feature a full HD+ resolution compared to the QHD+ resolution on the P20 Pro. Even more interesting is that the folks at XDA Developers forum bumped into the P20 Pro firmware, which gave out several details of the phone. Apparently, the flagship will come with an Always On Display feature, similar to what Samsung and LG have done before with their flagship phones.

As per leaked renders, the P20 will measure 149 x 71.3 x 7.5 mm (about 9.7mm including the camera hump) and as noted earlier, it will get a 5.7-inch full HD+ display screen. As for the P20 Pro, it’ll measure 155.3 x 74.2 x 7.7 mm (about 9.8mm including the camera hump) and rock a 6-inch QHD+ display screen.

It’s worth noting that the P20 Pro won’t be the first Huawei phone to feature an Always On Display. The first was the Mate 10 Pro, which also happened to be the first from the company to feature an OLED display screen. With this in mind, it’s possible that the P20 Pro could also come with an OLED screen. The Mate 10, on the other hand, has an LCD screen, which could also point to a similar panel for the standard P20.

Under the hood, the P20 range will be powered by Huawei’s own octa-core Kirin 970, a chipset built with artificial intelligence capabilities announced last year and also powers the Huawei Mate 10 and Honor View 10. The processor could likely be backed by a 6GB or 8GB RAM module, according to rumors, but expect a base model of 4GB RAM too, especially on the entry-level P20. As for the storage options, expect Huawei to go one up and include a 256GB variant, perhaps for the Pro model.

Details of the battery have also been uncovered in the leaked firmware, where the standard P20 is said to come with a 3400mAh unit while the P20 Pro will get a whopping 4000mAh unit, just like the Mate 10 sets.

Given Huawei has already released Oreo pre-installed handsets in the Mate 10, Honor View 10 and even the budget Honor 9 Lite and that they are ready to rollout Oreo for the devices like Honor 7X, Honor 8 Pro, etc., it’s obvious that the P20 and P20 Pro will come with Android Oreo pre-installed. Question is which version of Oreo?

Leaked renders have also shown that the P20 and P20 Pro will drop the 3.5mm audio jack in favor of a universal USB-C port. Huawei already made this possible on the Mate 10 Pro, but the standard Mate 10 has a USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio jack. Whether the latter case will also be true for the standard P20 is still up in the balance, but we should know more details as the launch draws closer.

One disappointing aspect of the P20 and P20 Pro is that they both won’t support microSD card storage. Samsung tried this model and it failed terribly. With that in mind, it’s hard to see where Huawei is going with this, but nothing is confirmed yet.

ProTriple-lens camera

40MP main camera and 24MP selfie camera

Facial recognition (Point Cloud Depth)

5x hybrid zoom

Huawei was among the first OEMs to go the dual-lens way and now that every other OEM is doing the same, the tech giant is opting for something even better. While the standard P20 will come with a dual-lens camera, the P20 Pro will come with a tri-lens camera on the back with a vertical arrangement. Renders and leaked photos have shown something similar to Apple’s iPhone X, but with a third lens just below the regular two.

There have been reports that the main shooter will have a total of 40MP while the front, which is expected to rock a dual-lens setup, will have a total of 24MP. Of course, nothing has been confirmed just yet. As you’d expect, the triple 40-megapixel lens setup on the back will be backed Leica’s technology. Dubbed the ProTriple-lens design, the rear camera setup will reportedly support 5x hybrid zoom, according to Evan Blass.

If you are a fan of megapixels count in your smartphone’s camera, you’ll definitely love this part of the spec sheet. Although not confirmed, we expect the P20 and P20 Pro cameras to boast superior sensors to give you one of the best camera experiences.

As per the numerous images outed by leaker Roland Quandt, we can see the notch as well as a front-mounted fingerprint scanner on both phones. This is an interesting choice by Huawei, especially the P20 Pro – mounting a fingerprint scanner on the front of a 6-inch device.

In Huawei’s press invites for the event to be held on March 27, the company has hinted at a tri-lens camera by using three circles and phrases like “see mooore with AI.” Notice the three Os in “mooore?” Well, there’s no better hint than this!

Also, a leaked teaser of the Huawei P20 not only confirms the name of the phone, but also the fact that it’ll feature a triple-lens camera on the back powered by AI.

Even more substantial evidence has surfaced pointing towards a dual-lens camera for the standard P20. Following the phone’s listing on TENAA, we have obtained some images that show off the phone’s appearance. In addition to the iPhone X-like dual-lens camera on the back, the images also show off a front-mounted fingerprint scanner and a notch-like design at the top end of the phone.

According to @rquandt, both the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro, which are codenamed Emily and Charlotte, respectively, will be sold in Ceramic Black and Twilight color variants. Huawei P20 Lite, on the other hand, is codenamed Anne and will be sold in Midnight Black, Klein Blue and Sakura Pink.

Huawei P20 image gallery

Huawei P20 Pro image gallery

By Roland Quandt

March launch looks confirmed

March 27 launch

April release date expected

Huawei didn’t unveil the P20, P20 Pro and P20 Lite at the MWC 2018 for fear of being overshadowed by the mighty Samsung and the Galaxy S9 and S9+. As a result, the Chinese OEM scheduled and even sent out invitations for an event to be held in Paris, on March 27.

After the launch, the devices should be hitting retail and online stores in April, with pre-orders expected to start right after the announcement.

Just give us competitive pricing!

No price details available so far

Rumors point to a starting price of 4000 yuan ($635.

As for the pricing of the next-generation Huawei P flagships, let’s hope the company follows an aggressive pricing policy to shun off the serious competition in OnePlus 5T/OnePlus 6 and Galaxy A8/A8+. The base variant of P10 was launched at a price of 649 euros — raised to 799 euros for the P10 Plus — which already put them beyond consideration for not only OnePlus fans but also for many users, unless you are a Huawei faithful.

Sure, it’s logical to expect a bump in the price tag for the P20 and P20 Pro, but we would hope Huawei doesn’t do that because their P series is already on the pricey side in a smartphone market that’s serving the users well in budget range too: case in point, their own Honor 7X, the Redmi 5 Plus/Note 5, the OnePlus 5T and the Galaxy A8 Plus.

Although not confirmed, it’s believed that the P20 will be priced at about 4,000 yuan, which translates to about $635. Not bad huh!